The introductory chapter of Discover the World Wide Web with Your Sportster, Second Edition, provides a perceptive commentary on the present state of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Here, it is stated that the Internet is in need of an application which will transform the "much-hyped but difficult-to-use linking of computers around the world to being a highly informative, highly usable database and communications tool." It is further stated that the various available Web browsers (e.g. Mosaic and Netscape Navigator) all have difficulties and limitations which make them insufficient to handle the complexity of the Internet.
Part of the problem is in the complexity of addressing a resource on the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web uses an addressing system known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that defines the location of a resource on the Internet. URLs are comprised of up to four parts: a protocol, a domain name, a path, and a filename. The combination of these four parts can produce a complex address for a resource. For example, the address for information on two-way pagers on the Motorola home page is: http://www.mot.com/MIMS/MSPG/Products /Two-way/tango/desc.html.
The popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web has spawned a number of Web-related periodicals. One such periodical is Yahoo| Internet Life, which provides reviews of Web sites. This periodical includes a tear-out address guide having URLs for the reviewed Web sites. To link to a Web site of interest, an end user types into his/her computer a URL printed on the guide. Scientific American is another example of a periodical having a page of URLs. The aforementioned complexity of addressing on the World Wide Web can result in the end user typing a lengthy URL to navigate to a Web site of interest.
The end user may read all or a portion of the periodical before linking to any Web site of his/her interest. For example, the end user may read the periodical at a location distant from a computer or a like network navigation apparatus with which to link to the Web stite of interest. Further, an end user may find from the periodical a plurality of Web sites of his/her interest. In these cases, the end user, when located at the computer, can link to a first Web site of interest by manually entering a first URL from the guide. Thereafter, the end user can link to a second Web site of interest by manually entering a second URL from thief guide. This step can be repeated for other Web sites of his/her interest from the guide.